How parties use talk radio to influence polls

The line between marketing and manipulation is a fine one at the best of times. Into the third month of a ten-month federal election campaign, it’s a distinction journalists should keep in mind as politicking becomes more intense in the weeks ahead.

Parties spend inordinate amounts of time and money on marketing. Some of that spending is obvious. Some isn’t. Alex Marland, a political science professor at Memorial University in St John’s, and Matthew Kerby, currently an associate professor at the school of political studies at the University of Ottawa moving in June to the school of politics and international relations at Australian National University, have produced an interesting study on how modern political parties use talk radio to manipulate public opinion polling results — and how they stack online straw polls.

Marland and Kerby set out to discover whether political parties engage in systematic co-ordination of calls to political talk radio programs. Their hypothesis was that “the presence of polling companies in the field increases the probability that a member of the legislature will call into an open line talk radio program.” A secondary goal of their research was to explore political party manipulation of local media “Question of the Day” online straw polls.

Their subject was VOCM, the popular St. John’s radio station that runs talk shows with a broad reach throughout Newfoundland. They had the advantage of using data logs from a St. John’s media monitoring company between March 2010 and March 2013 that recorded the program, the date and duration of each call, a brief description of the content of the call and the name (real or not) of the caller.

They matched that against news releases from Corporate Research Associates, the main firm polling in Newfoundland, indicating when they conduct regular surveys. CRA also offers the government an opportunity to buy questions in their Atlantic Quarterly poll. From those sources it’s easy to guesstimate when the company is in the field asking questions and gathering data.

Marland and Kerby found that there was a 24 per cent higher likelihood that legislators would call into VOCMshows when pollsters were in the field. That number was even higher during an election campaign — and higher again on the day when poll results were released, as politicians tried to shape how the poll was reported.

Manipulating talk radio content may produce polling results that substantiate a party or government’s policies — particularly if those policies are controversial.

The authors cautiously note their conclusions cannot be translated automatically to national politics — but there’s no reason at all to assume they wouldn’t hold true for other local talk radio programs on private broadcasters across the country that reach a relatively narrow geographic audience.

In a previous study, Marland obtained data from provincial governments on how much they spent on public opinion polling and media monitoring of talk radio. He discovered that in smaller provinces media monitoring of talk radio is sometimes used as a barometer of public opinion in place of more expensive opinion polling. So manipulating talk radio content may produce polling results that substantiate a party or government’s policies — particularly if those policies are controversial.

One obvious recent example was Conservative MP Larry Miller’s participation in a talk radio program last week, during which he expressed the opinion that women who want to wear the niqab while taking the citizenship oath should “stay the hell where (they) came from.”

Maybe that was a blunder. It also might have been a strategic statement designed to appeal to a segment of the electorate by political actors well aware that, between now and October 19, pollsters will be in the field almost constantly. Many who didn’t hear Miller make the comments in Owen Sound, Ontario, have certainly read or heard about them — and that extends the reach of talk radio.

Then there’s direct political manipulation of online straw polls. Marland and Kerby looked at all the questions asked in the same three-year period on VOCM’s online “Question of the Day”, discovering that on average about 3,000 people responded on most days. Yet on some days about 20,000 people answered. Questions on those days involved political players, parties and key public policy issues. Those that mentioned a specific cabinet minister by name received the highest total responses of all.

It’s easy to work out why that happened. The St. John’s Evening Telegram has printed leaked messages from the premier’s office and Conservative party officials to party members encouraging them and their friends to vote repeatedly in VOCM polls on specific issues. Smartphones make it much easier to vote non-stop on online polls.

“In some respects this is no different than coordinated letters-to-the-editor campaigns,” says Marland, “but the average person doesn’t know they are being manipulated this way.”

In fact, these party tactics designed to influence both how the media report the results of polls and how they frame their stories create a vicious circle.

“The manipulation of online straw polls and the media’s promotion of the results is propagandistic because citizens are unable to discern between reality and facts. By promoting the results of unscientific surveys, the media turns a false reflection of reality into a perceived reality, which in turn incentivizes political actors to engage in a surreptitious tactic that creates perceptions of truth,” they conclude.

The next phase of their study will explore how political parties and their supporters manipulate the comments section of online stories, as well as postings on Twitter and other social media.

Christopher Waddell is an associate professor and director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa. He also holds the school’s Carty Chair in Business and Financial Journalism. He is a veteran of the CBC and Globe and Mail newsrooms and now works with iPolitics as an associate editor.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

10 comments on “How parties use talk radio to influence polls”

And as Prime Minister Harper”s administration makes it more difficult for the media and the public to access information [ Foreign Affairs, Finance etc. ], this type of American style influence peddling becomes more difficult to repudiate.

Ah, yes! that American influence which no one is talking about!
It’s funny but Ted Cruz who announced for the Republicans today is a well known Koch brothers
apparatchik.
So far, not a word of this in our media coverage.
But then, our press never spoke of how the Kochs spent half a BILLION dollars on Romney alone!
Let’s see how the media cover our political scene now.
Harper refuses to disclose who gave him millions and our press refuse to push for this.
Can you imagine for a New York minute how rabid and sanctimonious they would all be if
Trudeau hadn’t been so open??!!
This year we the citizens are looking at the pundits, pollsters, press and lobbyists with an
incredibly discerning eye and ear. And they know it.
We’ve given too many women and men way too much homage and their day of reckoning and telling us
the truth is here!

The trolls Harper pays with OUR money are less than subtle.
They are all over intelligent sites like iPolitics, The Tyee, rabble.ca and any other engaging forum.
Until recently they never bothered with these sites as they had Sun News to feed their greed.
If we let them, they could drive us batty, but readers who are devoted to the truth and have
decided who deserves their trust are not easily rattled!
It’s very amusing to see these puppets trying to sabotage the more enlightened readers with their
PMO bafflegab and talking points. All they succeed in doing is making fools of themselves aa they
reveal how desperate Harper truly is.

They fall in line with the likes of ‘Minister” Kenney as he just won’t or can’t ease up on his pathetic
obsession with Trudeau!
As he blusters and tweets his way through his job, he’s a disgrace to all thinking Canadians.

The Tyee bloggers are a pretty tough bunch!
I almost feel sorry for some of the Conservative commenters who come on the site with guns blazing in attack mode.
ALMOST… I don’t because they seem generally pretty mean.
Some of them seem to have no idea what they’re in for… they get addressed right away, flagged if necessary, and it must not be their favourite assignment.

Thanks so much for your comment, Yeti … I feel a bit better. Opposing these Conservative shills is tough work. I myself have been engaged in mortal combat (as it were) with a dude named “thecloser” … he operates using the nasty one-liner jab … the non- sequitur putdown. His name sort of gives him away, don’t you think? :)

Ha ha! I’ve seen that one before.
The ones that I have problems with are the bigots, but they are flagged and vanish pretty fast on reputable sites.. so I try not to look at yahoo because there’s zero moderation.
There was a young-sounding guy last year on the Tyee who attacked every single comment and demanded all to provide extensive links for all our thoughts, but refused to do the same for his own.
You could tell he had a sheet that instructed him how to beat up people on progressive news sites.
A whole bunch of those guys hammered the poor schmuck until a couple of days later his profile vanished and all his comments just said “Guest”.
Honestly sometimes it’s like watching cats beat up a mouse on there.
But to me, it’s not about winning an argument, it’s about speaking truthfully and holding your integrity so you don’t devolve. These guys want everyone to devolve into primordial amoebas kneeing each other in the mud, as their emperor sits back and smirks because he rules through chaos.
Thecloser has personal issues that have nothing to do with you, you just happen to be there.
And that name…ha ha! It sounds like someone who blows on their fingers after typing a put-down.

Thanks Chris for shining some light on this ugly thing crawling around in the shady corners.
It’s interesting to me all the commentary about how “Canadians have changed.”
However, nobody correlates the definite change I’ve noticed to the date of 2006.
After the person who is our present prime minister got in, suddenly phone-in shows and online news pages were loaded with opinions that were quite foreign to our national character and identity, but absolutely in line with Stephen’s.
I remember reading a column by Lawrence Martin describing no less than 1500 paid communications workers years ago, now apparently confirmed to be over 3300.
So have we changed?
I remember during the (still unresolved) Afghan detainee story, at least 50% of people said the Geneva Conventions weren’t that great and shouldn’t be applied to Afghans.
And though even my small B.C. city is multiracial, suddenly everyone hates other races, yet uniformly hold their tongues on any issue with a non-caucasian member of Harper’s government.
I wish people would delve deeper and ask questions instead of parroting this “Canadians have changed” thing.
With the flip of a switch, fifty to seventy-five percent of Canadians became in line with the far right of American politics?
The lack of curiosity on this topic is pretty weak.

In Victoria CFAX talk radio might as well be called the “voice of the left” . The Harper Hating is tangible in the rhetoric of the show hosts and made more obvious by their selection of guests. The other choice is the CBC !